Sen. Ted Cruz is getting embarrassingly desperate as his opponent Rep. Beto O’Rourke edges closer to him in the polls. Republican Party leaders have noticed this and are funneling corporate PAC money into Cruz’s campaign. To many political analysts, this is an acknowledgement that Cruz might actually lose his seat in the Senate.

Through recent ads and fundraising strategies, Cruz has proven this desperation to voters. In an attack ad against O’Rourke, the Cruz campaign compiled videos of O’Rourke using swear words and warning voters not to let their children around him. This just proves that Cruz has no substantive arguments against his opponent. Instead, he goes after his opponent’s use of “vulgar” language, which proves that Cruz is stuck in the Reagan era of politics which focused on decorum, being stately and clearly not a “real” person you could relate to. In today’s political climate, swearing and speaking normally is often seen as the sign of a genuine person and a truth teller, which was a huge pull for President Trump’s campaign in 2016.  Ironically, despite the fact Trump uses swear words as well, he will allegedly be campaigning for Cruz in October.

Hypocrisy is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the Cruz campaign. One recent fundraising strategy used by the campaign was to send out letters soliciting campaign donations disguised as a court summons. These letters are reaching a wide variety of people who could easily be fooled into thinking they’re getting randomly called into court. It essentially scares them into opening the letter only to see a Ted Cruz letterhead and options to circle different levels of campaign donations. The fact that his campaign felt the need to scare people into opening up their mail shows that they are feeling the pressure of O’Rourke’s momentum, and all it does is make Cruz look bad to anyone with the slightest amount of empathy.

This behavior shouldn’t be surprising. Cruz has a history of using these sorts of deceptive campaign tactics. During the 2016 GOP presidential primary in Iowa, the Cruz campaign called voters to inform them that Ben Carson would be dropping out of the race after the caucus when Carson had no plans to drop out of the race at the time.

However, simple deceit isn’t the full extent of Cruz’s disregard for basic democracy. During his 2012 senate election, He had taken out 1.1 million dollars in loans from Goldman Sachs Inc. and Citigroup Inc., which is required to be disclosed to voters under federal election law. In May 2017, with a unanimous vote, the FEC declared that Cruz violated campaign finance regulations because he had failed to disclose these loans. The Cruz campaign ran into issues with the FEC again this election season by taking more than the legal individual donation limit from those pledging monthly donations to the campaign. The case was dismissed once the Cruz campaign showed an effort to remedy the situation, but it just goes to show how little Cruz cares about running an above board campaign.

With such a lack of legal or ethical values, Cruz clearly isn’t afraid to fight dirty. Someone who is not afraid to achieve the lowest low in order to gain a slight advantage isn’t someone who should be representing the state of Texas. For someone who campaigns on religious morality and “Texas values,” he seems to somehow lack them himself.

Essentially, we have a choice between a person former speaker of the house John Boehner calls “Lucifer in the flesh,” aka Cruz, or literally anything but that. You don’t even have to vote for O’Rourke; you could write in someone or vote third party, but Cruz should be a hard no from just about anyone who hasn’t had their soul stolen. I urge you as voters to consider the power you have to shape politics outside even the bounds of party or policy positions. We as people have power, and we shouldn’t let a scumbag like Cruz represent us under any circumstances.